Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday May 25, 2013 @09:26AM
from the don't-cry-for-them dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google has sent letters to app developers registered in Argentina saying they won't be able to accept payments on developers' behalf after June 27th. 'The change applies to both paid apps and apps that use in-app purchases. The move appears to be related to new, restrictive regulations the Argentine government has imposed on currency exchanges.' According to the Telegraph, 'The new regulations required anyone wanting to change Argentine pesos into another currency to submit an online request for permission to AFIP, the Argentine equivalent of HM Revenue & Customs. To submit the request, however, you first needed to get a PIN from AFIP, either online or in person. Having finally obtained your number, submitted your online request and printed out your permission slip, you could then present it at the bank or official cambio and buy your dollars. Well, that was the theory. In practice, the result was chaos. ... damming the flood has come at a huge cost to the economy, especially since the currency restrictions were coupled with another set of regulations that effectively imposed a near-total ban on any imported goods.'"

Venezuela has had a similar currency exchange regulation system for 10 years now.The limits are ridiculous:- 400$ for traveling abroad, the paperwork has to be submitted 20 days in advance- 400$ for internet shopping *per year*- credit card usage abroad has a different limit depending on the destination and duration. On average 100$ per day, the paperwork has to be submitted 30 days in advance

Basically the government wants to control everything, not only for businesses but also individuals, and it does a crappy job at both. The end result is investments going elsewhere and the economy suffers.

The country has never before been in such a bad shape. Since Chavez took office, the Bolivar lost its value by 992%. This is in the country with the second biggest proven oil reserves in the world, and an oil price of more than 100$.

My wife and her family (the latter still stuck there unfortunately) second your emotion. Reminds me of a colloquial definition of insanity that Einstein guy said once. Socialism seems like a great idea on the surface, but for whatever reason it continues to fail and is generally trumpeted by the incompetent and corrupt (sorta like capitalism, but with a greater fail coefficient).

I think that when any person or entity gets too much power, either in Socialism or Capitalism, it generally leads to abuse. Power, profit, ego.

I was once joking when I thought we should be governed by robots that cannot deviate from their programming to serve and protect citizens. But then I realized that's what the purpose of a Constitution is, any Constitution. A set of relatively static laws meant to protect, serve, and guarantee rights.

I was once joking when I thought we should be governed by robots that cannot deviate from their programming to serve and protect citizens.

That vaguely reminds me of the society in Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth. The president was a boring administrative position, without opportunities to actually screw things up. The position was filled by means of a bi-annual lottery. The only way you could get exempted from the lottery was by means of having a mental handicap or by having committed a severe felony. (Trying to weasel out after having been drawn to be the next president was a serious felony in itself.:-))

I think that when any person or entity gets too much power, either in Socialism or Capitalism, it generally leads to abuse.

Two big differences:1. Socialism requires the concentration of power in one entity. That is what socialism is.2. In capitalism, even though corporations may become powerful, they don't have the power to arrest or kill you.

Citibank didn't arrest the protesters. The police did. And they did so because the protesters were trespassing. Just because you have legitimate reasons for being in a space doesn't allow you to protest there.

Second, in the Citibank case there might be a case of police overstepping their authority (the claim there is that the protesters tried to comply with orders to leave, but were prevented from doing so), but in that case, it is the police doing the overstepping not the business.

How many Pinkertons were prosecuted for those they killed? I didn't find any indications there were prosecutions, but maybe they are downplayed so long after the fact. No, under capitalism, the corporations can kill you with impunity. At most, a small fine for murder, but you have to spend many millions of dollars before you can fine them for less than they make in a day. That's capitalism.

Does it count where Ford stated that they expect the Pinto to kill, but the $5 fix with a recall would be more than just waiting for the lawsuits? They knowingly killed people for money, and no charges were filed. Or are you choosing to ignore one of the most pure capitalism periods ever because it was so horrible for anyone who wasn't a capital owner? The socialist movement in the US owes its beginning to the horrors of capitalism. Socialism is horrible, but better than capitalism.

Socialist dictatorship (central European, and south American) is bad, socialist democracy (English, Australian) is better. Just because your teacher beat you in school doesn't mean all school is bad, you just had a bad one.

I think that when any person or entity gets too much power, either in Socialism or Capitalism, it generally leads to abuse. Power, profit, ego.

A corrupt capitalism still produces things, albeit at less than full capacity or optimum efficiency, whereas a corrupt socialism simply wastes resources to little or no effect because nobody gives a shit individually about the fate of the collective property.

This is in the country with the second biggest proven oil reserves in the world

Which does you no good if you cannot get it out of the ground. Chavez misappropriated the funds earmarked for repair, replacement and maintenance of oil field equipment and operations and diverted them instead to social programs. The result was a bit like eating your seed corn. Now the oil fields are only producing a fraction of the oil that they should be and no foreign firm wants to touch Venezuela with a ten foot pole because of the recent nationalizations by the Venezuelan government which is still pack

I was wondering about that as well. Might be they just couldn't add that feature to their system at such short notice. Alternatively it might be they are worried about the legal ramifications of such a change.

Or just a field which said "bank account". Currency is not really an important factor.

Of course it is. If I am receiving payments made in USD, to a USD account in a bank in Europe, I sure don't want them making any stupid assumptions and sending the money in EUR. That will cost me several percent.

That would just shift the burden of conversion from Google to the local developers, so that is not really the answer. The point of this is to artificial restrict the transfer for foreign funds into / out of the contry so the government can get a favorable FX rate to pay off it's bills.

Here in Brazil we had this kind of policy in the middle '80s. It brought incalculable damage to our economy and to our global competitiveness, together with hyperinflation and other such funny stuff. We finally abandoned this idiocy in the beginning of the '90s and haven't looked back since. Too bad South American countries in general are firm believers in the "But We Are Special!" School of Economics and don't like to do basic stuff such as looking around to see what worked and what didn't to then decide on policies. Argentina is going to suffer a lot in the following years until its government learn the lesson.

For other troubled countries to then disregard, after all, they're special too!

It happened back when we didn't have a stable currency. Then we adopted policies which created a stable currency and it stopped. Amazingly, the US dollar is a stable currency. See a trend there?

There is no problem for dolar imports, we have no permission to remove dollars from the system not otherwise.

Yes, because adopting the economic doctrine of the 18th century (mercantilism) is smart. Here's a notion for you: there is no such thing as actually exchanging dollars for pesos. When someone who has dollars wants pesos that's for the sole purpose of purchasing stuff valued in pesos, When someone who has pesos wants dollars that's for the sole purpose of purchasing stuff valued in dollars. This means that the exchange of currencies goes like this: pesos go, meet dollars, and after a while return to Argentina where they belong; dollars go, meet pesos, and after a while return to the US, where they belong; meanwhile, stuff go from the US to Argentina and and stay in their new home, and stuff go from Argentina to the US and stay in their new home. In other words, currencies are tourists, goods are migrants. If you block one half of one side of the equation, you block the other half, and then the whole equation. The exchange of goods, which is what matters, stops both ways, and you're left with whatever exists within your country and no more. Your oligarchs, monopolies and cartels all thank you gladly, your population is left purchasing overpriced trash (but they all can work in exchange for said trash, woohoo!), and after a few years you're technologically broken.

Money is just not a unit of exchange, it is a store of value, so there is something in the exchange from pesos to US dollars.

Now, currency can't leave the country – but money is a bigger then then currency.

Argentinians may prefer to exchange their goods and invest abroad where returns are higher. (high taxes, inflation, and regulation decreases returns.) Now, yes, those funds have to eventually be returned (unless the person emigrates) but that could be decades from now.

And imagine the opportunities for bureaucratic mischief as more and more layers are added in between someone who has something to sell, and someone who wants to pay for it.

When people complain about "big government," it's exactly this sort of (somewhat) unintended consequence and life-squashing administrative death by a thousand cuts that is really the concern. Too many byzantine rules and hoops to jump through, with too many low-level, unaccountable functionaries being gatekeepers in their own little fiefdoms. In the US, it looks like the IRS's increasing ugliness (to say nothing of what it will look like when they're policing everyone's individual compliance with ObamaCare requirements).

Domestically, this is what's being referred to as the rise of the Fourth Branch. And it's deadly.

Only time will tell if Argentina's monetary policies further the interest of the Argentinian people. Bear in mind that central banks like the federal reserve corporation are creating money from thin air at zero percent interest rates with no end in site for years. There is no reason for banks to solicit investment from the free market when they can just go to the central bank to print more money. Additionally there is marginal benefit for people to save money in a bank with near zero interest rates. Who kno

The government printed money like crazy which caused really high inflation. So how does the government fight inflation? they add price control, which causes scarcity, and currency control which kills imports. Here is a video [youtube.com] showing people that got wind that there was corn meal, chicken and some other products in a supermarket

Governments exists solely for oppressing people, making sure they are "in line". There is no such thing as government that serves the people, by definition. It's the people which serve and obey the government.

There really were big efforts to move the country to a more open economy, almost 25 years of effort that resulted in chaos and riots [wikipedia.org].

In other countries, such as Chile, Uruguay or Ecuador, this process was successful, but Argentina failed to shrink the government role enough to not contract more and more foreign debt. This is the same shitty situation that is now happening in Spain and Greece. If you shrink the role of the government, the government has less income, but if you have a huge foreign debt, th

The case of Argentina is peculiar. I this case, corruption is not an unintentional consequence... it is pretty intentional. If you look at Argentina's economic policy, you see plenty of hardcore measures that everybody knew would not work, implemented time and again. They have seen and done everything under the sun. Forcing dollar parity, frozen people's accounts, took people's retirement savings, defaulted on their debt, etc etc. The only constant: people in power benefited. That's why most people in ther

The case of Argentina is peculiar. I this case, corruption is not an unintentional consequence... it is pretty intentional.

But it's intentional here (in the US) too. The people who want more and bigger and more intrusive and more involved-in-everything government want it because they're fans of having the people who fill in that growth to have more power and personal influence. The people who most push the expansion of the government in size are those who consider being part of that vast middle-man organization to be a natural fit for their instincts and disposition. There are people who really don't aspire to create or produc

... why Google cannot pay to someone? The restrictions are for the Argentinian (yes, like me) that want to buy foreign currency. The company can send the money to the persons bank account, and the developer will get the money in local currency. Besides, in the link above, in spanish, Google does not say it's reasons. For the moment, with these information at hand, I really don't think these restrictions are the reason. Maybe when Google explain them selfs.

You can be sure it is due to the government regulations. After all, Google gets a 30% cut of the money - they won't cut off their revenue stream unless they need to. Now, it is completely possible that there are workarounds for the new rules but that implementing said workarounds would cost more than the amount of return - based on the number and profitability of the developers and apps coming from Argentina. Whatever the issue, it will come down to "protectionist government regulations ruining the economy"

Computers aren't even assembled in Argentina, just packaged. It's a massive scam there.

As for the 30% cut, that can easily happen before Google even deals with the developer, really. The developer just sees the remaining 70% in the transaction, and that means that for regulation purposes only those should count as well. So no, that shouldn't cut Google's bottom line. If anything, only the developer should be affected.

I live over there. Here's what's going on, I'll try to explain it because even fellow Argentinians don't really understand:

Argentina is a country that is very culturally different to the rest of Latin America, and even the world and likely the right place to look at when you want to see the results of a government being more involved instead of less. By the time of the second world war, Peron [wikipedia.org] did a deep change to the country, created public health, public education (made public university free), public retirement funds, changed labor laws to highly benefit the employees (employeers must pay them many sort of benefits and can't fire them without paying compensation), etc.

Peron tried to made it clear that he wasn't going towards fascism/socialism/communism, but his model was more of creating a capitalism with more social equity through the intervention of the government. Most of the "upper class" did naturally not like this and tried to fight this by financing coup d'etats by the military (It's a little more complex than, but that goes beyond what i'm trying to explain and there's plenty of material to read about dictatorships in Latin America).

My point is that Argentinians are sort of "spoiled" and that has even been transmitted from generation to generation. There is this strange belief that everything that happens is the fault of the government, and that the government should take care of it.

For example, beyond public health, retirement, education, etc. If you are homeless, the government will build you a house. If you are poor and your children can't study, the government will give you money to send them to school. If you are unemployed, you just receive money. Transport is dirt cheap because it's subsidized too, some products are price-fixed to be made more accessible and now the government is even making a line of clothes that is more cheaper and accessible.

The government spends a fortune in social help and taxes are high as the result. But it goes beyond that. The economic model is also designed to ensure that unemployment is really low. They do this by forcing people to spend their money and not keep it, so there is constant inflation and purchasing foreign currency is forbidden. By spending the earned money constantly, the local economy is always very active, restaurants are packed full, and everyone is using credits to buy stuff.

The right wing media opposition to the government is strong and focuses on mainly on corruption and insecurity, to make people feel they are being constantly robbed and freak them out. However, people is employed and is earning decently nowadays so this has a limited effect, which gives place to the saying ("roban pero hacen", translated to "they might steal but they still do for the country") Even the media themselves know they can't mention anything related to a right wing point of view (less state intervention) or people will label them as traitors.

So the big question is if economical stability by this means are worthy. Buenos Aires is a production powerhouse and generates a lot of income, but there is a large part of the population that would not be able to be sustained in a more open economy. As a result, the country is very closed do the rest of the world economy. The rest of the world isn't very healthy economically either.

What's going on with Google is really nothing new. It's extremely hard for Argentinians to be entrepreneurs in this context, so we just open offshore companies in Panama, Delaware or other places and get paid there (otherwise we can't get get paid in us dollars or euros), then transfer our money to the country either illegally (black market price is higher), or legally (needed if you run a company and need to pay your employees). It's not impossible, just harder.

>So the big question is if economical stability by this means are worthy. Buenos Aires is a production powerhouse and generates a lot of income, but there is a> large part of the population that would not be able to be sustained in a more open economy. As a result, the country is very closed do the rest of the world > economy. The rest of the world isn't very healthy economically either.

> Argentina has no US dollars to import energy and other services and so they are taking idiotic measures to obtain those US dollars

That was indeed stupid, and the government should have acted before. But then again, do you realize it's the *government* importing the energy? That is not a common scenario, it's usually just the private sector in charge of that.

So, you can't save for the future which means you will have no money when you are too old to work or hard times come. The only choice is to rely on others to take care of you. All personal responsibility is gone and you are a slave to your government. This sort of thing used to happen back in the day in the States but it was private companies running company towns where the company owned everything and made sure you were always in debt to the company. (Your statement about having to buy on credit fits right

The country has public retirement funds. You get paid by the government when you retire depending on how much taxes you paid while you worked.
It's still not very much and you still need help by your familiy anyway.

Argentina is likely the right place to look at when you want to see the results of a government being more involved instead of less. Shocked by the Great Depression, like many other countries Argentina turned to a strongman. Once in power, Peron did a deep change to the country, and Argentina swiftly fell from being one of the wealthiest countries in the world to a basket case. Now, instead of being as rich per capita as the US or Switzerland (like it was in the 1920s), it's in the same economic class as Russia and Botswana.

Despite this abject failure, the media can't point this out, because people will label them as traitors. It's extremely hard for Argentinians to be entrepreneurs in this context of unremediated Peronism, which has wrecked the Argentine economy.

THIS. I own a software company in Argentina. We used to design our own hardware too, and we manufactured overseas. We did some manufacturing and all of the assembling in Argentina. We were steadily moving towards more local manufacturing. The low Shenzhen prices made it hard, but we where making progress in that direction. All of a sudden, getting dollars and sending them overseas was more expensive and harder every month. Then the overreach of non-automatic licenses destroyed us (you have to request permission 90 days in advance to maybe get a limited import quota of certain items). In the meanwhile, the big hardware stores (Garbarino, Fravega, etc.) continued to bring all-chinese products into the country without issues, even those competing with our products. We had to shut down most of our hardware operations. We put more emphasis on our SAS products. We almost went bankrupt several times, in the end, we made it, but it left us weak and in debt. Some of that debt where taxes. They quickly froze our accounts and took their toll. We've paid most of it, and we're growing again. Well, until the government decides to change the rules in favor of the owners of this country again.

I hear people accusing the Kirschner administracion of being socialists. This isn't fucking socialism, this is a systematic plan to destroy what's left of our economy, while spending more and more money every day on free lunches for the unwashed masses that keep voting for this fucking stupid cunt.

I will be very fucking surprised if anything is left after this bastards are done with our country.

I'm sort-of-middleclass, and get the worst of everything. I'm excluded from government house plans, or similar, but it takes 100% of 12 years of salary for me to pay an actual flat near where I live.I don't use public transportation, either (I walk everywhere), but I end up paying a huge deal of it in taxes.I also pay a fortune in health care and another fortune in taxes every month, but I don't re

Im from Argetina, and i can tell u, there is almost no1 that likes this kind of goverment but its dificult for the middle-class people to fight them back. The buy votes and voters... send ppl to kill you or, if u have a store they will break it down and make u pay for thinking an speaking against the goverment.

Almost no1 wants to be like venezuela, we here hated Chavez and we widely hate the venezuela goverment, but sadly enough, we are going to be there... a 2nd venezuela and then, who the fuck knows.... m

And we travel every year to visit the family. If you say nobody likes the government, but at the same time I see most of my family support it (yes, we are a very small portion of the population), and Cristina Fernández won the last elections (and the economic measures we are arguing here were already in place) with 58% (against 16% of the second-best candidate)... I find it quite hard to swallow that you say "nobody likes the government". No, there is no suc violence or vote buying as you mention (and

Seriously. It is better then having nothing and it is possible the dev could actually cash it in. Bigger devs could have an overseas bank account and get payment into that. Smaller devs could get products delivered to them internationally. It does not solve every problem, but it is better then no payment.

By design, the number of bitcoins will level out at 21 million, ergo deflationary. End of story (but not the arguments). As a short term salve for Argentine devs, bitcoin payment is better than nothing, but nothing more than yet another ephemeral method of flight from the peso.

Ultimately, Argentina's monetary problems will continue their traditional cycles until its social spending is ramped down to something its economy's surplus value can sustain. Given that the financing machinations haven't yet hit a wa

While I love bashing the govenment and their stupid monetary policy as much as the next guy (I honestly don't think the president understands how money works), currency exchange policies have nothing to do with this particular situation. Google pays the local developers in local currency, and there's no restrictions to exchange USD to Pesos, you can just walk into any bank with foreign currency, and they'll exchange it for you (at a shitty rate, but again, that's not Google's problem, they're just paying th

So, basically, if you want to host the files yourself, and do the e-commerce yourself and get the shitty exchange rate yourself, then the government is totally OK with that. But if you want to pay Google to do the e-commerce and currency exchange and file hosting by taking a cut of your profit, then the government will make that very hard. One of the benefits of the international market is discoverability. I don't have to get folks to come to my website to buy my product, they can buy it in the world wi

I don't see the connection. How can a law designed to strengthen the peso (by prohibiting ARS -> USD conversion) be a problem for developers selling apps priced in USD? (This would imply USD -> ARS conversion, which is what the Argentine goverment wants.)

Actually, I was going to reply something extremely similar.Just open a bank account in Uruguay. A ferry costs ~500ARS (~100USD for those unfamiliar with local currency).Have google pay you in UY, and keep your money there. UY is like the latinamerican Switzerland, they love to keep you money, and ask little questions.

Argentina tried pegging its currency to the US dollar. It was a disaster, because the US dollar rose in relation to other currencies at the time (late 1990s) and so did the Argentine peso. As a result, Argentine goods became expensive to the outside world and imports were cheap to Argentines, and this led to economic collapse. The effects were really bad as it gave a bad name to the economic liberalism which was being introduced at the time.

It really is sad that our two countries can be dragged into war over an island full of not much other than sheep. It's even a little bit comical that a country the size of Argentina would consider that an 'invasion'. We think of it more along the lines of 'punching a baby in the face'

In the second world war, we gave up the channel islands for a bit, Guernsey, Jersey, and so on. Then we went suicidally against the strongest, proudest country in Europe, with the most awe inspiring and powerful army the world

Nonsense, the Americans would not get involved in Argentina, the NATO operation in Libya was commanded by a Canadian and even with half the world begging them they're not touching Syria with a barge pole.

Yeah, but those are very politically different situations. 'interfering' with local affairs of another country is very different from aiding an ally, both politically and in terms of clean-up (the US wouldn't need to as the British government would take care of it).

You went crazy if you think that Argentina is able to move any of it's rusted ship, planes to even try to invade Punta del Este in Uruguay. Really, get ride of you CNN, FoxNews and anothers delirant journalist.

Oh, what a great idea! Menem did almost that for a decade. Wanna know how it went?

The US keeps going to war and threatening countries to keep the dollar as the worldwide currency. What a great idea! Use this fiat currency everywhere, and we'll keep the printers right here!. We're subsidizing your lifestyle.

It won't last very long. The oil market is steadily moving towards the Euro, and bombs won't help the US this time.